On Saturday, I made first use of one of my Christmas presents from Justine — a voucher to brew beer at Barleycorn Brewers. Trav, Stephan and Chris came along; since all of them drink beer in varying styles and amounts and none have brewed beer before it seemed only fitting.

The brewery is quite small but seems capable of handling the steady stream of customers who are all either brewing their beer, bottling their beer or just lounging around on the seats provided — there’s a big-screen TV, DVD player and cable TV along one wall, as well as signed sporting memorabilia. All that’s needed is a pool table and it would be a true “bloke’s club”.

Unable to decide between two or three choices, we were given a box of six different beers which will taken from our veritable bounty of 144 bottles upon bottling. One I was considering (a pilsener similar one I drank in Prague) was not available, so I moved onto my second choice which was a lager similar to Stella Artois (curiously called “Stella!”).

We first tasted the Stella! and all seemed to agree that it was rather a nice drop. Not too challenging to drink and it went down easy. Stephan said it reminded him a little of VB, which I also detected. I detest VB but the biggest comparison is that it was refreshing and easy to drink. It certainly didn’t taste like bile.

The second was an ale of some sort and though it was good, drinking over 100 bottles of it seemed a difficult task indeed. So, we opted for the Stella!.

Since the advantage of the brewery is that they do all the real hard work (buying expensive equipment, having plenty of different and interesting raw materials on hand, sterilising the equipment, storing the beer), all we had to do was add the ingredients to the large kettle of boiling water as directed, set a timer, then sit down and drink some more. I’m still interested in brewing at home, but this is a hell of a lot more convenient.

There are now three agonising weeks to wait until we go back and bottle all 144 138 bottles and taste the creation we made. Since this was the first time — and I was the guinea pig, with Justine forking over all the money — we stuck mostly to the recipe (only going over a little bit on a few ingredients). Assuming that the beer tastes like the one we tasted (or better) I can see at least some of the four of us going back to brew more.

I’d planned on putting up our Christmas decorations next week but I’m not sure if I will get time, so I put them up yesterday instead.

Justine was not happy.

I know it’s too early to put up decorations, but I like the Christmas season (the day itself is made out to be too big of a deal, but I like the season itself).

Yesterday evening Justine and I put up our Christmas decorations. For some reason we always seem to put up our decorations the second-last weekend in November.

This year we ditched the lights for the tree we’ve had for three(ish) years and bought a 230+ light set for the tree (the other had 35) which has eight different blinking options. Whee.

The interior of the house is also tarted up with lots of tinsel and other random knick knacks. Nothing outside though, at least not yet; we’re not those sort of people.

Well, most of the Christmas season is now over for another year, so what did we get up to?

First things first, let’s make with the present list. Since presents were flying thick and fast in some cases, I might have mucked up a few of the people who gave us presents; let me apologise in advance if that’s the case.

I received (in chronological order):

• The aforementioned Mario cross stitch from Justine
• Half a giftcard from Mum
• Nutrimetics moisturiser from Rachel/Ron/Sam/Monique
• A JB Hi-Fi gift voucher from Diane (Justine’s mum)
• Gummi Bears from Diane (Justine’s mum)
• A Johnnie Walker Collection from Justine
• A miniature Vorocube sculpture from Justine
• A print of a painting of a Japanese mitten from Justine
• A lollipop from Justine
• An Astro Boy bobble-head statue thing from Justine
• The Incredibles from John/Kerryn/James/Sarah
• Some made-for-TV DVDs from Justine’s Nana
• A box of chocolates from Justine’s Nana
• A very nice Lowepro Nova 3 AW camera bag from Dad
• A lens cleaning kit from Dad
• A bamboo plant from Cheryl
• Some Simpsons scotch glasses from Cheryl
• A Simpsons Poker Set from Chris/Mel
• Half a box of chocolates from Richard/Eleanor/Matthew

Justine received (also in chronological order):

• The other half of a giftcard from Mum
• Scrapbooking stuff from Hannah
• Box of chocolates from Moran/David (Justine’s bosses)
• A Japanese tea set from Rachel/Ron/Sam/Monique
• Nutrimetics Lip Gloss from Rachel/Ron/Sam/Monique
• A big arse round pottery bowl thing from Diane (Justine’s mum)
• Lots of scrapbooking stuff from Diane (Justine’s mum)
• Big Christmas teatowels from Diane (Justine’s mum)
• A Canon IXUS 55 digital camera from Me
• 1GB SD Card for the camera from Me
• Leather case for the camera from Me
• Animal Crossing: Wild World for Nintendo DS from Me
• A cheap K-Mart dual-suspension mountain bike from Me
• Princess Mononoke DVD from John/Kerryn/James/Sarah
• Gift card (which turned into The Muppet Show Season 1 DVD a few days later) from John/Kerryn/James/Sarah
• Cash from Ian (Kerryn’s dad)
• Ovenware and other food related miscellany from Justine’s Nana
• Scrapbooking album from Cheryl
• Scrapbooking stuff from Cheryl
• A big arse bowl thing with rocks and candles from Dad (my Dad, not Justine’s)
• Scrapbooking stuff from Chris/Mel
• The other half of a box of chocolates from Richard/Eleanor/Matthew

Alright, now that’s out of the way, we’ll have a quick blow-by-blow of the events that transpired over the course of three days.

Christmas Eve

Justine and I made our way to Rachel (Justine’s sister) and Ron’s (Rachel’s husband) for a Christmassy dinner. Justine’s mum made an appearance too, since she was flying out to Brisbane on Christmas Day. We managed to keep their children away from the presents until after dinner, but not long after. We all got our presents and the kids got their huge piles of stuff as well. A few more drinks were had, Justine poked me in the eyeball with a metal rod, we drove around Rowville and looked at some Christmas lights and we made our way home to prepare for

Christmas Day

I was woken by Justine around 7:30 which, considering, meant I still got a lie in on Christmas morning. We unwrapped our presents (well, I mostly did the unwrapping since Justine only got two expensive presents from me while I got a higher number of slightly-less-expensive presents) and then proceeded to eat some pop tarts before getting ready to head to Justine’s Dad’s place for lunch.

Lunch was relatively traditional, we had chicken, roast spuds and gravy in any case, which was all I really need (I had plenty of vegies too, before you start judging). Presents were distributed and then James (Justine’s younger brother) and I played a few rounds of Mario Kart DS, some Nintendogs and then a reasonably long session of PictoChat (a Nintendo DS program that lets you type, write or draw to others) where we drew the many ways in which the other would be killed or maimed.

Later in the afternoon we made our way to Justine’s Nana’s house where we saw Justine’s Nana (obviously!), her aunty Karen and Karen’s partner Roger, as well as seeing Rachel, Ron and their kids again. Yet more distribution of presents occured and we made our way home in time to slump onto the couch.

I made sure I had enough time to have a drink of my Johnnie Walker Blue.

Boxing Day

A decent lie-in followed by a long session of Animal Crossing DS for both Justine and I. We proceeded to see my Dad and Cheryl (as well as Chris and Mel, Tim, Richard and Eleanor and their son Matthew) for a not-quite-traditional-but-still-nice barbecue lunch which we ate outside. Mel had bought her DS but we didn’t bring ours, unfortunately. It seems that Mel had bought the DS after seeing ours (and playing Nintendogs) a few months back. Since there were three people with digital EOS cameras and Justine ready and willing with her new camera, we all went to the park so Matthew could play and we could all be nerds and take photos (and photos of people taking photos of people taking photos).

Richard, Eleanor and Matthew went home and the remainder played a game of Wits End which seemed to go forever. Because we couldn’t be bothered to move, we then played an hour or two (or three?) of poker with my new Simpsons set. Once we whittled the players down to three from seven the remaining three decided to have a hand dealt with not betting to see who would be the “winner”.

Since I won, we decided it would be for the best if I take all the chips home (since they’re mine it was quite convenient). Exhausted, Justine and I went home and slumped straight into bed.

The end, for another year,

Because I brought home Justine’s Christmas present and let her play with it for a bit, she let me open one of the presents I’m getting for Christmas — hurrah!

From the feel of the item, I thought Justine had one of my photos printed and framed. I was wrong.

It was a framed Super Mario Bros cross stitch!

Around six weeks back I’d seen a woven Mario and thought to myself, “I can do better than that.” Turns out I was sort of right. I sourced in-game screenshots of Super Mario Bros and separated Mario and the ? block. Next, I put them into a cross stitch design program called “Stitch” (I forget how I found it, Googling for that title is not particularly useful).

To make the design in the software I had to recreate Mario pixel-by-pixel, but I think the result is pretty good. Early 8-bit sprites are well-suited to cross stitching, since both are done block-by-block.

Thanks Justine! This one turned out so well I have a million other designs popping out of my head.

I picked up my sericel about 90 minutes ago now, and must say they did a pretty good job of framing it. The celluloid and background picture were quite difficult to align properly, but it looks perfect to me — even one particular part I knew I would be pedantic about being done right.

View the full-sized image

The complete thing is quite large and takes up a substantial part of our mantle, but I like it. Finally, I received my Christmas present!

With Christmas gone for another year, I can safely say this was one of the easiest and most relaxed I’ve had for ages.

Christmas Day started off not at the crack of dawn, but at 9:30ish — i.e. when we finally decided to roll out of bed — which is when the presents began. Shortly after, I received a call from mum — who is now doing quite well after her extremely serious operation — in the middle of the early-morning present delivery. A few hours later, when we could be bothered, we went off to Diane’s (Justine’s mum) place for lunch. Lunch was fine — no traditional turkey though I couldn’t care less — and Justine was the lightning-fast distributer of Christmas cheer/gifts. The kids enjoyed playing with the sticky wall clingy things that Justine gave them; they got other presents, sure, but they didn’t care since they were sticky wall clingy things.

Around dinner time we got off our arses and went to Dad’s place. The mountains of uneaten food largely stayed that way though we did manage to have a few small bits and pieces. Much talking and watching of television ensued — not too Christmassy, watching TV, but we can be thankful we weren’t forced to play charades or some such.

Lunchtime on Boxing Day was spent at Justine’s “little nana’s” (the one mentioned here house and dinner was spent back at our house with a traditional Christmas fea… no, wait, it was a barbecue. Probably nicer anyway since it was me cooking.

Presents of note for me:

• The aforementioned Simpsons sericel, which I won’t see until February
• Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon 1994 vintage, put into barrel on the 23rd of July, 1994 — in barrel 211
• A piece of paper with a monetary value attached (commonly called a “gift voucher”); redeemable at JB Hi-Fi stores
• About 4-5kg of lollies/chocolate from various members of Justine’s family; for some reason she told them I wanted lollies for Christmas

Note: This post was back-dated.